04/09/2026
What kind of person do you want to be?
It’s an interesting question, because when people think about change, they often focus on what they want to achieve, what they want to have, or what they’d like to be different in their lives.
But through the work I do, I’ve found that there can be another, perhaps more important, question underneath all of that: what kind of person do you actually want to be?
Not what you think you should be, or what other people might expect of you, but how you would genuinely like to think, feel and behave.
How do you want to be when life is going well? And perhaps more importantly, how do you want to be when it isn’t — when someone upsets you, something goes wrong, you’re under pressure or things simply don’t turn out the way you’d hoped?
I think most of us can recognise that there are times when we’re happy with the way we’ve handled something, and other times when we look back and think we could have responded differently. Sometimes it’s something we’ve said or done, and sometimes it’s simply the thoughts that have been going through our heads.
That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with us. We’re human, and none of us gets it right all the time. But noticing those moments can be useful, because it gives us a chance to ask ourselves whether the way we’re thinking, speaking and behaving is actually taking us towards the person we want to be.
And perhaps that’s where change begins.
Not with criticising ourselves for where we are, but with recognising where we are and deciding where we’d like to go.
